In case you thought pythons eating everything but the napkins in Everglades National Park was some kind of joke, get a load of the March 18 report, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
You would think, as fast as bunnies breed, they might have a chance to out-birth even ravenous pythons.
Nope.
When the summer heat juiced up python activity, the big snakes in Everglades National Park ate up to a fifth of a study population of marsh rabbits each week.
Says mammal ecologist and study co-author Robert McCleery of the University of Florida in Gainesville, the rate of predation over the long term is "not even close to sustainable" for the once-abundant rabbit population in the park.
Its the best evidence yet -- contrary to what a mammal ecologist might predict -- that the pythons really could wipe out populations of a famously fast-breeding mammal, he says.
The Science News story about it admits McCleery had been skeptical that pythons by themselves could do so much damage. "Marsh rabbits (Sylvilagus palustris) can produce six litters a year of multiple young," he says, "and biologists have long expected that in rich habitats, fast-reproducing little animals rebound faster than predators can gobble them."
Here's how McCleery and colleagues know what they know: "They monitored the fates of 80 marsh rabbits, some introduced into the snakiest locales and some in snake-poor zones."
Examining the carcasses revealed mammals as the top predators even in python-poor zones. But pythons killed more than two-thirds of the dead rabbits in the high-snake zone.
Were talking about a total switch of predators, McCleery says. Pythons, which dont limit their diet to rabbits, may also be a major cause of dwindling populations of slower-breeding mammals, the study says.
It's time to bring the subject up (if not again and again and again):
There's $30 million in the first year Amendment 1 till for "removing exotics." Pythons are exotics.
One-tenth of that money -- $3 million -- would still be approximately 10 times more than the money spent on python removal last year.
The folks who deal with this problem in the Everglades every day do have an eradication plan. It isn't perfect -- and won't be until the Department of the Interior gives its permission to kill the creatures inside the park.
They need to start somewhere. Time was always against nonhuman mammals in the wild. But the pythons have accelerated it dramatically.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
